About Patrick

Defence and security expert with comprehensive media experience, coupled with specialist knowledge of Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan and military operations past and present.

London-based security analyst, Patrick has worked for NATO as an analyst and is a former Captain in the British army's Royal Irish Regiment. He is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Exeter's Strategy and Security Institute, studying the reform of the U.K's Army Reserve, cohesion and logistics. Patrick has appeared on international, UK and Irish television and radio to discuss security matters, and has written for leading broadsheets. His latest appearances were as an expert contributor to National Geographic's 'Nazi Mega Weapons' series, where he contributed to four episodes, including on the Atlantic Wall, the Wolf's Lair, the SS, and the Siegfried Line. He has specialist knowledge on the conflict in Afghanistan, having served in Sangin in 2008 and he has provided security research and analysis for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He also has expert knowledge of the current security situation in Libya and comments on wider security issues, including strategy, current military operations, military history, the role of the media in war, and ethics in war.

He has written for The Irish Times, The Guardian and The Independent, and has appeared on The National Geographic Channel/Channel 4, Sky News, BBC News, BBC News HardTalk, BBC Radio 4 Today programme, BBC File on 4, BBC Radio 5, and numerous Irish national TV and radio programmes.

His memoir, 'Callsign Hades', (Simon and Schuster 2010) has been called "the first great book of the Afghan war" and describes his experiences serving with Irish soldiers in the last Irish line regiment of the British army in one of Afghanistan's most dangerous places. It has since been incorporated onto the syllabus at Sandhurst, and excerpts from his work are also taught to Australian officer cadets.

Patrick was educated at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth and King's College, London, where he studied Intelligence and International Security before attending the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He was awarded the Trust Medal for Overall Academic Performance, The John Pimlott Prize for War Studies and the Defence and International Affairs Prize during his time there.

He has commanded soldiers on operations in Afghanistan and deployed to Cyprus, Kenya, Malawi and Malaysia.

He has also published in military and ethics journals and on defence issues on political blogsites. He has spoken at numerous universities and military command courses on security and ethics issues. He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Royal United Services Institute, the Irish Military History Society, the Military Ethics Education Network, and former member of an IED and Radicalisation project funded by the US Office of Naval Research and Hull University. A full list of Patrick's publications are listed in the links section below.



Friday 18 May 2012

Afghanistan: The metrics of strategic failure.

Those attending the NATO summit on Afghanistan on Sunday in Chicago have a lot to reflect on. So far, 2012 has not been a good year for the organisation nor the country. The killing last Saturday of two British servicemen again highlighted the increasing ‘Green on Blue’ attacks by Afghan security personnel on NATO soldiers, while US Marines urinating on corpses, Korans being burnt, the murder of 17 Afghan civilians by a renegade American sergeant and a large attack on Kabul have all represented serious political setbacks. These setbacks have been all the more significant given that the military campaign cannot now save the West from long-term strategic failure.
This is not to say the military have failed in their mission: in the regions where they have been sufficiently resourced, strong tactical and operational gains were made during 2010/11 in the key provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. The transition of security duties to Afghan forces also remains on schedule.  However, these successes have not translated into the strategic, and ultimately, the political gains it the surge was designed to deliver.
In the 2007 Iraq surge, for example, violence decreased by about 70% in five months. In doing so it created the space within which governance and the rule of law could begin to be established. Twelve months into the surge in Afghanistan, the U.N estimated that violence had risen by 39%; governance remains patchy at best. Furthermore, violence is increasing even in areas that are meant to be secure: attacks in the Kandahar region rose by 13% over the winter 2011/12 period. Attacks in the East were up 3%. Taken together, these figures indicate that in the two regions where insurgent violence is most concentrated, attacks have continued to rise, even during the traditionally more benign winter months.
Meanwhile, NATO states populations’ support for the war is at their lowest levels ever (27 percent in the U.S), France and Australia have already announced accelerated withdrawal timetables and progress toward a political settlement has stalled. A December  2011 US National Intelligence Estimate concluded that pervasive corruption and Kabul’s incompetent governance had undercut the surge’s security gains and that President Karzai’s government might not survive a NATO withdrawal at all. Basic metrics support this view.
The central statistic of the Afghan campaign is an economic one. Although it has experienced rapid economic growth recently – the IMF estimates Afghanistan’s GDP to be over $19 billion – without the inflation generated by over 100,000 NATO troops and their support staff, the country’s GDP is historically close to $12 billion. The cost of training and equipping the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) is forecast by the U.S to be $4-6 billion a year for the foreseeable future, depending on their size. Thus, funding its security forces will cost Afghanistan about a third to a half of its actual GDP every year. This is simply unsustainable.
Of course, the U.S and its NATO allies are aware of this. Reports suggest that the U.S will continue to provide $5 billion next year; it hopes NATO members will make up the $1.3 billion difference. However, so far the alliance has only raised $550 million (Britain has given $110 million), leaving a significant shortfall in ANSF funding. Moreover, the long term sustainability of even this amount is in question. With Europe’s financial woes continuing, it will become increasingly difficult to justify funding an unpopular and distant war that could eventually see NATO governments supporting one side in a civil war.
Here, the echo of the Soviet experience in the country begins to reverberate loudly. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, they continued to fund and equip President Najibullah’s forces. With Soviet support, the beleaguered president was able to cling to power, gradually ceding some 90% of the country to the Muhajideen insurgency as his army’s appetite for the conflict waned. However, when the Russians turned off the money tap in 1992, Najibullah’s regime rapidly crumbled. 
NATO knows that the ANSF in their current form are unsustainable. Next year, the U.S will cut in half the $11.2 billion it gave the ANSF for 2012; the net result being that, after a rush to reach ANSF manning of 352,000, the force will be reduced just as it hits this target. The latest NATO figures indicate that Afghan forces currently total 344,000, but given the long term questions over sustainability, a force of about 230,000 is now being considered more realistic. 
Forces this size would fall far short of the number required by NATO’s own doctrine to successfully conduct a counter-insurgency campaign. Such doctrine holds that 20-25 counter-insurgents are per 1,000 members of the population. Even given the geographic concentration of Afghanistan’s insurgency in the south and east of the country, the 230,000 figure falls far below this ratio. By comparison, Iraq, which has a similar population to Afghanistan, has over one million army and police personnel for its 30 million citizens. Simply put, even ignoring Pakistan’s hand in Afghanistan’s affairs, without a large and sustainable security force to suppress the insurgency, the government will be unable to hold the areas NATO forces have fought hard to clear. The only way to avoid this scenario is through some sort of political settlement.
However, in the short term at least, a political settlement seems unlikely. The Sunday assassination of Maulvi Rahmani – a top negotiator for Karzai’s High Peace Council with strong links to the Taliban– has highlighted the continuing precariousness of the negotiations process.  Mahaz-e Mullah Dadullah, a hard line insurgent faction, has claimed responsibility for the killing. Their actions indicate that many elements of the Taliban remain opposed to any negotiated settlement that would deny them the return of to an Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Clinton has not spoken pro-actively on negotiations in over a year. Ahmed Rashid, a leading Afghan analyst, recently indicated that the main reason for this is due to disagreements within the U.S administration over whether the negotiations process should be prioritised at all.
Yet some sort of a political settlement is now the only way the West can arrest Afghanistan’s slide into civil war. Otherwise, on their current trajectory, the basic metrics of its eleven year investment of blood and treasure in Afghanistan point towards strategic failure. When combined with the qualitative evidence of widespread corruption the complete picture is even worse: a lack of popular support for the Afghan government, an internal Pashtun/non Pashtun divide, a massive forthcoming shortfall in aid as military assistance is cut and the continuing undermining of stability by Pakistan provides the context within which the quantitative evidence must be understood. Reports that former Northern Alliance warlords have begun re-arming in preparation for the Afghanistan NATO leaves behind suggest they understand the ground truth better than those meeting in Chicago this weekend.

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